


Space and Time Measured by the Heart

by OffWhiteWarden (orphan_account)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-08 04:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4291074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/OffWhiteWarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt at doing a 100 drabble challenge about my female Shepard, Diana*, and her girlfriend. Possibly will have mature content later, or possibly platonic interactions with other squad/crew members.</p><p>This is going to bounce around all three games (and post-game) timeline a lot.</p><p>(*btw the trans female character tag is because Diana is a trans woman)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

If anyone had told Liara how she would meet the Commander, she would have laughed at them. It was something out of a story, like the ones in the books her mother gave her as a child, actual physical pages brown with goddess-knows how many years of page turning. The brave warrior charging in at exactly the right moment, fighting to save the helpless.

The Commander had even had the right name for it; Diana. All the information she’d sought out on Earth mythology had been confusing, too much information and too many different stories. But, eventually, she’d been able to find information on Diana, goddess of the hunt. 

And if Diana was one thing, she was a hunter. Even off the battlefield, she still had that air about her, her eyes always maintaining a thousand yard stare, fingers always twitching where she kept parts for her combat drones. Liara would have been lying if she’d said she wasn’t terrified the first moment she met the commander, even after facing a squad of geth. The Commander looked like she was born in a warzone, a deep scar running across the right side of her face over her eye, a tattoo peeking out of her armour just enough for Liara to know what it was, hair cropped almost to baldness to keep it out of the way, and wearing the most disgusted looking scowl Liara thought she had ever seen.

_Liara paused as she looked up from her omnitool. No, she murmured to herself, it wasn't quite like a story. But it was close enough._


	2. Interlude

Diana clenched her fists as she looked out the window at the stars beyond, tiny flickers of light that seemed to dart past them as the ship moved, then fading into black as they moved too far to see. With her eyes focused, she could just about follow a single cluster, a burning, constantly changing clump of pinks and reds and purples, until it too vanished from her view. Her fingers shook slightly as she bit down on her lip, a sharp metallic taste entering her mouth almost instantly. She’d gotten used to it these past few days, when it felt like she was an empty husk being kept alive by continuous sparks of panic. And looking out over the galaxy didn’t help one bit.

Fuck, was all she could think, all those lives are on me. 

The sound of footsteps, soft as they were, behind her, made Diana jump. Leaning her weight into her heels, she spun around to face the intruder, brown eyes meeting pale blue ones. Diana breathed out. 

_“Liara.”_

While Diana may have been nervous, she wasn’t showing it nearly as much as Liara was. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she clutched her arms around her torso, pupils widening as they made eye contact. 

“Shepard, I…” she started, head dropping, a nervous smile pulling at the corners of her lips. 

“You can call me by my first name. We’re not that unfamiliar with each other.”

Making eye contact, Liara rolled her shoulders back, trying to avoid appearing so stiff. “I… I suppose we aren’t.”

Diana lifted an eyebrow. “Is there a particular reason you’re here?”

Liara swallowed. “I was wondering how you were doing. We’re going to arrive on Ilos quite soon. This is almost over”, she paused, “and there is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

Liara’s hands were soft against Diana’s rough, calloused ones, tracing circles on her palms, rubbing up against where she was missing a fingertip on her left hand. Briefly, Diana wondered if she used some kind of cream, or if it was just an asari thing. But she was drawn from her thoughts by hot breath against her neck, the shorter woman looking up at her intensely. 

_“I’ve seen the way you look at me, Diana.”_

Then she closed the space between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this doesn't fit with canon at all, but I always thought that, although Liara and Diana didn't start a relationship until ME3, they had a brief kiss before Ilos.


	3. Making History

Diana wasn’t sure what she expected to see when she saw Earth again. But she hadn’t been expecting this.

It was beyond words almost, a valley of ashes stretching as far as the eye could see, like the Reapers had directly drained all the colour and life out of it already. She swallowed, her throat dry. Something was burning in the distance, something she couldn’t identify and really didn’t want to. She could guess what had happened here from the grey specks that fell from the sky in a seemingly endless stream. 

“Diana.”

She turned to the woman next to her, pulled from her thoughts, back from thinking about the reality of what was happening here. They had a job to do, a purpose for being here. For now, thinking about this was a step in the wrong direction. Closing her eyes, Diana took a deep breath, cold filtered air rushing into her lungs through her respirator. She knew she looked awful under the helmet. The war had taken its tole on her, eyes circled so dark it was almost black from a lack of sleep, cheekbones gaunt and skin rough and weathered. 

Her brown eyes met blue ones and she let out a slow, steady breath. The war had taken its tole on Liara too. She just wore it better. Diana knew that if they held hands out of their armour, Liara would look an even more pale blue than she normally did against her own dark brown skin. 

“Are you ready?” Liara asked, and Diana could tell that under her helmet her eyes were becoming watery. 

Diana nodded. 

“Then I suppose this is goodbye.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

Linking their fingers together, Liara gently squeezed, as if she was afraid that letting go would mean saying goodbye forever. And it was entirely possible that was the case. 

_“Then let’s make them pay.”_


	4. Enraptured

Diana cannot keep her eyes off the tiny freckles under Liara’s eyes.

It’s such a small part of her and there is so much more about her that she loves, but she cannot shake her focus on those tiny specks. She doesn’t quite know how to describe them, though, admittedly, she has never been good with words. Machinery, fights, warfare, she can do. But describing the small scatter of marks on her lover’s skin, she has no words for. Let alone the way Liara looks at her before moving closer for a kiss, the subtle smile she has before she wakes up next to Diana.

She supposes if Liara was human, she would compare her freckles to dots of cinnamon that she couldn’t help but want to taste with a kiss. But that’s only because she would know the sort of thing to say, have examples to follow. 

Ashley once explained it well. Other people always said what Diana meant better than she could. It was just in this case, she didn’t know whose words to use. So she uses no words at all. 

She wondered sometimes if Liara realised why she insisted on trying to kiss every inch of her, like the freckles were the stars of an unexplored galaxy, and she the first explorer. Diana thought she might from the expression she sometimes saw in her eyes when they met her own. But that look was more an understanding that she was enraptured than an understanding of why.


End file.
